Building a Chiller of Sorts, Tubing Type?

[Cartierusm]

So I can't afford a good aquarium chiller and it seems the cheap ones on ebay are not worth it so I'm going to do what I always seem to do and build a simple cooling coil.

Now normally I don't have material restrictions but with the ano bath obviously I need plastic tubing. I could use titanium but don't have the cash.

All I'm going to do is get a coil of tubing and drop it in the ano bath and run cold water into it from another bucket of ice and water with a pump.

The question I have for all of you is that it seems most tubing at the hardware store is fairly thick walled and acts as an insulator. Does anyone have any suggestions to an inexpensive easy to find tubing I can use for this project. It has to be able to transfer heat through it's walls.

[dmiom]

hi,
can't answer your specific question, but just a couple of observations....

Arguably the best method is to have a chiller as part of a pumped circulation. If the chilling does not involve bulk circulation of the electrolyte, you'll still need some good agitation/circulation within the tank by some means to ensure homogeneous electrolyte and avoid temperature gradients in the tank. Depending on the size of your tank, this means that, even if you don't have a chiller in the circuit, you may still need pumped circulation of the electrolyte as well as aeration.

If the boundary between your primary cooling circuit and the electrolyte has restricted thermal conductivity, the way to get more heat transfer is to increase the contact surface area. One way to do that might be to use the tank walls themselves. Create a bund arond the tank, ensuring you support the tank base and walls sufficiently (along the lines of a roman hypercaust) and then circulate chilled water vigourously through this water jacket. Assuming your cathodes are slung along the walls of the ano tank, they are a slight barrier but being metal they'll conduct the heat reasonably well.

Dave

[Cartierusm]

Thats a good idea. I already have an air pump that provides more than enough agitation.